A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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Perp Walk for Former Bear Stearns Employees

Today many newspapers ran a front-page photograph of ex–Bear Stearns fund managers walking in handcuffs. It’s called a “perp walk.” Instead of arresting people quietly, the police parade them in handcuffs before the media. The walk refers to when the whole spectacle is orchestrated in advance (i.e. “Are the TV cameras out there? Okay, let’s park the van 3 blocks away and walk slowly over to the courthouse.”)

Federal Appellate Judge David Sentelle, who was a former prosecutor himself, had a terrific article condemning this pernicious practice. Here’s an excerpt:

Why does the prosecutor subject the accused to that walk of shame in handcuffs before the media? It still appears to me to be no more nor less than an attempt improperly to sway the thinking of potential jurors or subject to the punishment of shame an accused who has not yet been convicted of anything…. The real shame, I think, is that of the prosecution more than the defendant.